German Social Democratic Party Chairman Franz Muentefering said he'll step down next month, after the executive committee rejected his candidate for the party's No. 2 post. He left open his participation in the new national government.

Muentefering, 65, told reporters in Berlin today of his decision after the SPD's executive committee chose Andrea Nahles, 35, for the position of general secretary, over his candidate Kajo Wassserhoevel. (...)

Splits are emerging in the 130 year-old SPD, questioning its cohesion and commitment to an alliance that its leaders are trying to forge with the Christian Democrats led by Angela Merkel. Left-of-center lawmakers including Nahles partly blame the party's record in trying to modernize the economy for ceding votes in the September national elections. (Source)

Party chairman's are politically powerful entities in Germany. Muentefering's decision is a blow to Germany's grand coalition government that isn't even in office yet.

What's next? A leading figure of the conservatives refusing to be part of Angela Merkel's cabinet?

Just in: According to newspaper reports, Edmund Stoiber - Chairman of the Bavarian chapter of the conservatives - apparently weighs his decision to become economics minister under Merkel. Without Muentefering at the helm, so the reports, he fears a left-wing backlash of the Social Democrats - nothing he would be eager to deal with as minister.

The WSJ's commentary "This Professor from Heidelberg", that is based on an interview with Paul Kirchhof - the conservative's pre-election candidate for finance minister - , is a lucid description of what can go wrong in German politics with a campaign which focuses on free market reforms.

One conclusion stands out:

"...in order to demonize someone in Germany, one has to make him American."

Yakoov Kirschen of Dry Bones has produced this magnificient cartoon that addresses the latest Iranian death threats against Israel.

Today - Saturday, Oct. 29 - about 300 Islamists demonstrated in Berlin against Israel. The annual worldwide “Al Quds Day” demonstrations ritually call for the destruction of Israel. This year's Berlin demonstration was not as openly anti-Semitic as last year's - because German authorities had requested the removal of hateful anti-Israel banners and posters. Also, about 200 democrats staged their own pro-Israel demonstration.

For a change, the reaction of the authorities and the pro-Israel demonstration are encouraging signs in Germany.

Outgoing German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, in his last visit to an EU summit, delivered a passionate plea for the European social model:

Gerhard Schröder used his last international appearance as the German chancellor to launch one of his strongest attacks yet on Anglo-Saxon capitalism, saying the European Union faced a straightforward choice between never-ending liberalisation or the re-tention of basic European values. (...)

He told his fellow heads of state and government: "We are confronted with a fundamental conflict. Should we elevate the market and never-ending liberalisation at the heart of our political action, or do we Europeans stick to our basic beliefs?" (...)

Mr Schröder's last stand against the Anglo-Saxon economic model was hardly unexpected. In a recent speech in Hanover, he said the model would never become the pattern for Europe. But his comments marred a summit that Tony Blair, prime minister and current holder of the EU presidency, had hoped would start the process of redefining Europe's economic priorities in response to globalisation, declining growth rates and an ageing population. (Source)(emphasis added)

In other news:

Germany considers raising pension age to 67Officials close to the coalition negotiations between the Christian Democratic Union and the Social Democrats said the proposal to raise the retirement age - to tackle rapid population ageing and spiralling pension costs - was under discussion.

Germans may face higher taxes to close budget gapGermany's grand coalition government is likely to increase taxes in order to close a €35bn budget gap by 2007, officials from the Christian Democratic Union and Social Democrat officials said yesterday. A step-by-step increase in consumption tax (currently at 16 %) by several percentage points from mid-2006 is being discussed in negotiations between the two parties.

Urging Germany to Speak Up on Human RightsThe deputy director of Human Rights Watch, Carroll Bogert, said in Berlin on Wednesday that more often than not business interests have been used as an excuse or justification for dodging inconvenient issues related to grave human rights violations in relations with a number of countries. (...)

Gerhard Schroeder is perfectly qualified to call on Europe to cling to the cherished European social model. After all, it works so well in Germany.

Germany's future workforce

Update: I forgot this. Please check Schroeder's feet. No further discussion of his character is necessary.

John Rosenthal at Transatlantic Intelligencer has compiled an interesting array of background information on "Bertelsmann's View of America". Quote:

I would add to David's (Note from David: Ray wrote the piece) observations that Bertelsmann is not only a - indeed the - major player in the German and, more generally, European media landscape, but also a major player in the US media: notably, via its ownership of Random House, America's largest book publisher. It was Random House imprint Alfred A. Knopf - and hence Bertelsmann - that in 2001 paid Bill Clinton the astronomical advance of $10 million for the literary (and presumably commercial) dud that would be his "My Life" memoirs. It was also - coincidentally or not - Bertelsmann, via Knopf, that last year in the middle of the American election season, published Nicholson Baker's Checkpoint, a novelistic dialogue about killing President Bush.

Read John's posting in full.

Steve did some additional research on our posting and came up with some surprising results:

Your post alerting me to the Johns Hopkins award to the Bertelsmann executive inspired me to hunt down some of the personalities and groups that seem to keep popping up in European and UN anti-American campaigns.

Did you know that a Swiss-based Anti-gun "research group" was one financier, along with Johns Hopkins University, of the Lancet Study - whose bogus body count of 100,000 is now used universally by anti-Bush rhetoricians to "prove" Bush is guilty of war crimes in Operation Iraqi Freedom?

The Geneva International Academic Network (GIAN) joined the United Nations Development Program in underwriting this Small Arms Survey Research Group, and thus indirectly, the Lancet Study. The UN contribution can't be verified because the link is disabled, but a look into the GIAN's contributor list reveals a pot pouri of Swiss Canton Ministries and UN offices engaged in the cooperative production of anti-American, anti-capitalist "research."

From the GIAN's introductory blurb: "Various international organizations, notably the United Nations Office in Geneva and the International Committee of the Red Cross, have also participated significantly in the network's establishment. The GIAN benefits from the collaborative and financial support of the Swiss Confederation (Federal Department of Home Affairs) and the Republic and Canton of Geneva (Ministry of Education)."

The GIAN's participating members include directors of the International Institute of Labour Studies, International Committee of the Red Cross, and the Geneva Humanitarian Forum. Interestingly, and probably significant, the GIAN also gets support from the Geneva Canton Ministry of Education, which was headed at the time of the Lancet study by current Swiss Foreign Ministry head, Micheline Calmy-Rey.I'm smelling the aroma of Marc Rich in here somewhere, too. He's hidden somewhere under a rug or a lamp-shade, but I'll bet the $100M that he owes NY State is repaying Clinton's presidential pardon by financing a gaggle of progressive Swiss "research groups" and their volumes of transnational, socialist pabulum.

We have obtained permission to print the original English version of this commentary in the daily WELT of October 21, 2005, by the Aspen Institute Berlin's Jeffrey Gedmin. Another jewel in our collection of Gedmin articles...

After attending in Paris recently a meeting of pro-democracy Syrians, I returned sheepishly to Berlin. That’s because I have the strong impression that a majority of Germans think like Peter Scholl Latour, namely that a) the Middle East does not want democracy; b) the outside world could not help anyway; and c) that the Amis should definitely not interfere.

I always wondered why Chancellor Schroeder would pile on his plane all those business executives when he travelled to places like Saudi Arabia. I found one explanation--thanks to one of Germany’s top bloggers Ulrich Speck --in the words of Dr. Gunter Muhlack, the Commissioner for the Task Force for the Dialogue with the Islamic World in the foreign ministry in Berlin. Dr.Muhlack says: “We do not want to impose our view of the world and our philosophy on our partners. Here I have the feeling there is a big difference between the American and the European approach.”

Maybe Dr. Muhlack has a point. The French, to be sure, insisted on “the European approach” with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. It turns out, of course, that in the case of the French this may not have been merely a matter of principle. Jean-Bernard Merimee, a former French Ambassador to the United Nations, was hauled before a French magistrate this week, alleged to have taken bribes from Saddam Hussein in the amount of 11 million barrels of oil. Also accused of being bribed by the former Iraqi regime are French senator and former interior minister Charles Pasqua; former secretary general of the French foreign ministry, Serge Boidevaix; and Jacques Chirac’s friend Patrick Maugein, who is also incidentally chairman of the oil company SOCO. Yes, you wonder where those “no-blood-for-oil” banners are when you need them.

I think it is time for Americans and Europeans to level with each other. In a pre-9-11

Anti-Semitic books are not permitted in Germany. Authors and publishers of anti-Semitic literature usually face the full brunt of the law, without regard to their nationality. Public presentation of anti-Semitic literature in Germany is simply not tolerated.

Of course, there are exceptions, for instance when the publisher is the Iranian state, as Matthias Küntzel observed at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2005:

"In fact the international publishers in Hall 5 at the Frankfurt Book Fair were not on my program. Having a few minutes before my train was to leave, however, I dropped by and was astonished to see the extent to which Iran was represented in the hall. The Iranian stands seemed to take up as much space as those of all the countries of the Arab League together.

Now, it is well known that the Iranian leadership is dedicated to wiping out the existence of a state member of the United Nations, namely Israel. And it is also well known that to this end, Tehran exports a crude anti-Semitism throughout the world.

Nonetheless, I was astonished how openly this occurred at the Book Fair. ...

There was, for instance, under the heading "Jewish Conspiracy", the text that influenced Hitler's anti-Semitism like no other work: The "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", here in an edition published by the "Islamic Propagation Organization" of the Islamic Republic of Iran."

Matthias Küntzel presents other amazing examples of anti-Semitic literature at the Iranian stands. I found this quote from one of the books particularly enlightening, from a strictly German point of view of course:

"The numerous footnotes added to the text by the Iranian publisher are particularly interesting. We find, for instance, talk of an "expansion of power" of the Jews during the Second World War ... and of German "resistance" against this "Jewish control"... (emphasis added)

Hmm... German "resistance" against this "Jewish control". Hitler, Himmler, Göring, Goebbels as leaders of the resistance? Freedom fighters, perhaps?

But there are other, more serious questions. Like this one from zombietime:

Is Germany, by blindly adhering to a universal tolerance of all views, unwittingly opening itself up again to a new wave of anti-Semitism -- the very thing that their ultra-tolerant society was created to ensure would never happen again?

The same source also reports on some cozy business deals between Iran and German publishers at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

This will please our readers: The "Berliner Festspiele", one of the many not too interesting cultural festivities in Germany with no apparent goal ("The Berliner Festspiele bring together a seemingly endless variety of arts and culture under one roof") on October 16 had organized a lecture on the important topic of

The War on Terror, the Rule of Law, Civil Liberties and Human Rights

A topic that as lecturer certainly deserved only the best of the best. Luckily, the organizers found this noted expert of international law:

This former rock star groupie (Mr. Jagger moved on to other venues in the meantime) is a reliable source of wild and incoherent anti-American bile, which makes her a prime target for invitations from the German left. Her original credentials seem to be more or less gone, as P.J. O'Rourke already observed in Nicaragua 1990: " "Here we had a not very bright, fortyish, discarded rock-star wife, trapped in the lonely hell of the formerly cute...". (And then he went on to a scathing attack on her political teachings. Read the book!)

The "Berliner Festspiele" proudly presented Mrs. Jagger's accomplishments in seemingly neutral terms: "For many years, Ms. Jagger lectured at colleges and universities in an effort to inform the American people of the tragedies occurring in Central America." Also, she made it a flourishing business to lecture the American people of the tragedies occuring in case they reelected George W. Bush. Which didn't hurt her at all in the eyes of the organizers of the "Berliner Festspiele", of course.

In her lecture Mrs. Jagger preached the expected sermon, according to Berliner Morgenpost: "Europe a paradise of enlightenment ... Bush is a sheriff from a cow town...".

I guess this makes Mrs. Jagger a likely recipient of next years "Peace Award of the German Book Trade". After all, there aren't that many anti-American peace activists available who haven't already been honored by German cultural institutions...

To add some flavor to our posting on Bertelsmann of last week: the Jagger event's moderator was Manfred Lahnstein, a former Bertelsmann top executive. Lahnstein - who also happens to be a former German finance minister and member of the SPD - sits on the board of the "ZEIT Stiftung", a foundation closely linked to the Bertelsmann group. ZEIT Stiftung has financed the Jagger lecture.

On Monday, Oct. 10, 2005, the U.S. returned the Rhein-Main air base to Germany.
The air base had quite a history:

Rhein-Main Air Base, Germany, June 26, 1948: Soldiers at Rhein-Main Air Base tally supplies to be loaded on planes as the airlift to relieve Soviet-blockaded Berlin gets under way. By the time the Berlin Airlift ended in September, 1949, a total of 278,228 U.S., British and French flights carried 2,326,406 short tons of material into the city. There were 39 British and 31 American airlift-related deaths during the difficult flights. (Source)

Germans then and now have every reason to be grateful for the American support in post-war Germany.

For those of you who don't know, Bertelsmann AG is far-and-away Germany's largest private media conglomerate. It is also a major, multi-national, multi-billion dollar media giant with a turnover of 17 billion Euros, a presence in 63 nations and a workforce of over 76,000 employees.

Stern Magazine: One of Bertelsmann's Best-Sellers in Germany

Bertelsmann AG also happens to own a majority share in Stern magazine, far-and-away Germany's most widely read weekly political news publication. This is the same rabidly anti-American Stern magazine that has recently published the following:

And the list goes on...Oh, and by the way, Bertelsmann also holds a 25.5% share in "DER SPIEGEL", (also one of Germany's best-selling weekly magazines), but we don't have time to get into that right now...

AICGS to Honor Bertelsmann CEO for "Global Leadership"

Not long ago, the Johns Hopkins-affiliated "American Institute for Contemporary German Studies" (AICGS) decided to honor Bertelsmann CEO and Chairman of the Board, Dr. Gunter Thielen, with its 11th annual "Global Leadership Award Dinner" this November 10th in Washington, DC. Here is how AICGS describes its mission:

"TheAmerican Institute for Contemporary German Studiesstrengthens the German-American relationship in an evolving Europe and changing world. The Institute produces objective and original analyses of developments and trends in Germany, Europe and the United States; creates new transatlantic networks; and facilitates dialogue among the business, political, and academic communities to manage differences and define and promote common interests."

Considering those goals, one really has to wonder how AICGS (an institution that styles itself as an "objective" analyst of German-American relations and media trends) came to the decision to honor the head of Bertelsmann AG with its annual "Global Leadership" banquet. After all, there are many people who have worked tirelessly to improve German-American relations of late. What has Dr. Thielen done to deserve this special honor?

Put another way: How could an "American Institute" that purports to promote stronger German-American relations hold a special dinner to honor the head of an organization that has propagated so much biased innuendo against the United States in Germany for so many years now? How can the people who run AICGS honestly hope to bolster transatlantic relations with expensive, black-tie banquets to honor America's worst enemies in the German media? And could this have anything to do with the fact that Bertelsmann has been a financial donor to AICGS over the years? These are simple enough questions...

If you would like to contact AICGS and let them know what you think of the organization's decision to honor Dr. Thielen, be sure to email them at: info@aicgs.org. We would sure appreciate an explanation.

Endnote: In the 1980s, AICGS also accepted donation money from the DDR, the Communist government of East Germany that imploded in 1989-90. Somehow this all doesn't seem so surprising...

WASHINGTON -- More than 48 million Americans who receive Social Security benefits will get a 4.1% increase in their monthly checks next year, the largest increase in more than a decade, the Social Security Administration announced Friday.

The average Social Security benefit recipient will see his or her monthly check increase from $963 to $1,002 starting in January.

The average retired couple both receiving Social Security benefits will see their monthly check go from $1,583 to $1,648.

What - a meager monthly $1,002 for the average Social Security benefit recipient? A paltry $1,648 for the average retired couple both receiving Social Security benefits?

So, here comes the proud average German worker Social Security recipient with a whopping monthly 598 Euro (approx. $720) in 2004 (in the states of former West Germany). For former employees, the average monthly rent is 812 Euro (approx. $980). Depending on how you combine the two amounts, the average monthly Social Security benefit in Germany is somewhere between 700 and 750 Euro ($840 and $900) (Source).

Now, I didn't bother to check the Social Security benefits for the average retired German couple both receiving Social Security benefits. I bet the ranch on a lower average, compared to U.S. data.

And then there are the "Nullrunden" - a difficult to translate German Social Security speciality that secures zero or negative income growth for retired folks in Germany. Average Social Security benefits in Germany actually dropped in the last 2 years, and the likelihood of positive growth in the year ahead is virtually nil.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush called outgoing Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder "to thank him for his service" on Thursday, a day after the German leader criticized the United States, the White House said.

"While the two leaders had differences at times on policy, the president said that he enjoyed working with Chancellor Schroeder," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.

"The president expressed his and Mrs. Bush's best wishes to Chancellor and Mrs. Schroeder as he prepares to leave office."

Schroeder's spokesman Anda said (according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung from October 15, 2005) that Bush wants to stay "continuously" in contact with Schroeder.

In an earlier post, I published excerpts of a critical review of the film “Paradise Now” from the daily newspaper WELT and lent my support to the critique. I have to admit that I hadn’t seen the film myself at that time.

I’ve now corrected this. It was a terrible experience.

“Paradise Now” is the first openly anti-Semitic film I’ve seen in the German cinema. Joseph Goebbels would have been proud of the numerous Germans who collaborated in its production (the film is distributed by Constantin Film/Munich). He would have praised in glowing terms the fact that the German taxpayer ponied up an essential contribution to the production costs. The materials for discussion of the film in German schools authored by a federal authority from the Central Office for Political Education (BPB) would have met with his grinning approval.

Our first posting dealt with the plot. In summary, young Palestinian men gratefully accept a command from a Palestinian terror group (my interpretation, not the film’s) to assassinate Israelis in Tel Aviv. After a few false starts one of the men carries out the assassination – a suicide attack in a bus.

The film’s action, especially the dialogs and discussions between the main characters, portrays the conflict between two positions. First position:

The Israelis are criminal occupiers who oppress the Palestinians. They must be combated with assassination and force.

Second position:

The Israelis are criminal occupiers who oppress the Palestinians. They must be combated with peace activists’ non-violent demonstrations.

The film leaves open which of the two positions is the right one. The only thing certain in the film is the guilt and malice of the Israelis, the “occupiers”. It’s not worth going into detail about the film’s striking polemics against the Israelis. No attempt is undertaken anywhere in the film to explain the Israelis’ position.Almost all of the Israelis appear in the film as soldiers - intimidating, menacing, anonymous, occasionally with sadistic impulses.

While the Palestinians, without exception in the German version, speak at length in flawless German, there’s only one place in the whole film where an Israeli speaks a sentence - German, but with an unpleasant accent.

Of all things, this one Israeli with at least a minimal script presence had to inveigh against his fellow citizens’ wealth – a character quirk from the Nazis’ anti-Semitic films with which older Germans will be quite familiar.

(Click on pic to enlarge)

Instructing a Palestinian suicide bomber how to kill Jews. Scene from a film co-financed by German authorities.

The film expresses no moral criticism of the Palestinian suicide attackers’ practice of murdering Israeli civilians. The only thing under dispute is whether suicide attacks actually weaken the “occupiers”. In one of the film’s most ridiculously revisionist scenes, the main character shrinks from the bomb attack

And you say Iraq is of no importance to Al-Qaeda?...read this. Of course Al-Qaeda denies the letter is real...which is telling in and of itself.

Here is our take: Al-Qaeda is losing the battle for Iraq. The forces of democracy are winning. The majority of German media will never report on these developments with the intensity that they report every US loss or setback. Clearly, German media have systematically refused, denied and failed to report on positive progress in Iraq, giving the German people a disproportionately negative view of things. (Of course this trend is not limited to German media).

Here is an email we received from a reader today on this very subject:

"Hi David & Ray- Glad to see how well Davids Medienkritik is doing. I took a look at the Spiegel homepage just now, wondering how they would handle the successful vote in Iraq. Surprisingly (just joking), there were only two stories about Iraq on the homepage -- if you search hard: Bush begrüßt Irak-Referendum , Irak: Al-Qaidas Friseur gefasst. This must certainly be a good measure of success in Iraq -- when Spiegel ignores it.

And in a few years the German people (and many others) will scratch their collective heads and wonder how the "disaster" and "debacle" and "quagmire" that was supposedly Iraq could possibly be anything more than a failed state.